Disquiet Junto submissions

More on this 396th weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Assignment: Make music with by humming a song and then processing the humming — at:

https://disquiet.com/0396/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0396-hum-a-few-bars/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project adapted (cropped, colors changed, text added, cut’n’paste) thanks to a Creative Commons license from a photo credited to Xavier Lacot:

https://flic.kr/p/5RUYVP

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Disquiet Junto Project 0396: Hum a Few Bars

The MiddlePhone is a work-in-progress instrument being constructed at Middle Farm near Yankalilla.

More can be read about the creation of the MiddlePhone here: https://tristanlouthrobins.wordpress.com/2019/08/07/communique-1-a-new-start-for-the-blog/

MiddlePhone tests (2019-)

Disquiet Junto Project 0394: You & Me

The Assignment: Accompany the music made by a species other than your own.

This is a project for World Listening Day.

Step 1: Think of an animal you would like to accompany. It may be one in your possession, like a household cat, dog, or bird, or perhaps it might be one for which you’ll need to locate a recorded example.

Step 2: Acquire audio of the animal you selected in Step 1, either by making a recording or locating one.

Step 3: Create a new piece of music by playing along with the audio acquired in Step 2. In the final mix, you and the animal you accompany should be heard at equal levels of prominence (of course, you may also trade off).

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Track notes:

This track was created with audio extracted from a video my partner had made of our cat, Neko snoozing in the afternoon. Her snore is supringly musical. I looped the recording in Max with a fzero~ object employed to detect the fundamental frequency of Neko's snore. The fzero~ is then delayed and used to provide the frequency for a triangle wave; in effect, creating a call and response to Neko's snore. In addition to this, each time a fundamental frequency is detected by fzero~, this triggers a snapshop~ with the output control the waveband of a noise filter. A couple of signal buses are also set up with tapout~ feedback set to near-infinity, creating a consistent sonic texture. Panning of the channels is controlled with cycle~ objects, whose respective phase are constantly shifting.

The title of this track is taken from a quote I came across recently by Japanese sound artist, Toshiya Tsunoda: "If you think about it carefully, the activity of an actual space always moves. [...] Place is always moving, like a sleeping cat." [1]

[1] https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/quiet-storms_toshiya-tsunoda

Tristan Louth-Robins, July 2019

[disquiet0394] (place is always moving) like a sleeping cat

Disquiet Junto Project 0395: Acoustic Expanse
The Assignment: Make music with (samples of) the biggest guitar in the southern hemisphere.

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0395-acoustic-expanse/24269

This project was proposed by Jason Richarson. There’s just one step:

Step 1: The biggest guitar in the southern hemisphere is in Narrandera, Australia. Junto member Jason Richardson recorded a wide range of samples of the guitar and made them available under a Creative Commons license. Now it’s time for you to play this guitar. Get the samples at big-guitar.com/download.

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Track notes:

The inspiration for this piece comes from my childhood/teenage observation of my dad's guitars hanging in the living room and how human voices, impulse-like sounds and other musical instruments would - depending on their loudness and/or proximity - ocassionally cause these stationary instruments to resonate sympathetically and sound.

I started by selecting a few nice resonant tones from the Narrandera big guitar. Looping these in Ableton so that they drifted in and out of phase with each other, I removed the attacks from each of the notes to create a continous drone that pulsated periodically. I sent the output from Ableton - via a 20w amp - to a Digitech exciter (i.e. transducer) which I placed on the soundboard 'sweet spot' of one of my dad's old guitars. This guitar has been in my possession for over 20 years - a 1976 Tama acoustic.

The surface of the Tama in effect becomes a resonater for the Narrandera guitar tones as they are 'transplanted' into the acoustic body of the Tama. Throughout the recording I occasionally strum the strings of the Tama - slack tuned and in approximate harmony with the Narrandera guitar tones. I also physically move the transducer from the Tama's sweet spot to other areas of the soundboard surface; which in effect, articulate different resonant qualities of the Narrandera guitar tones, and also makes audible some of the discrete artefacts of the Narrandera recordings.

[disquiet0395] acoustic transplant

halF fridgE [disquiet0396]

I wasn't sure what to do with this prompt, so (as I often do) I delegated the task to deceased U.S. President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon regularly taped conversations in his office and a number of these tapes came to light in the context of the Watergate scandal. On one of these tapes, an 18 minute segment was mysteriously erased, leaving only a string of pops, buzzes and hums. (interesting backstory and analysis: https://www.forensicmag.com/article/2011/02/cracking-watergates-infamous-18-12-minute-gap) 

I've done stuff with this audio before, including a set of three pieces that use only this audio, heavily processed in Ableton Live: https://soundcloud.com/north_woods/sets/nixon-18m

So I picked out one of the hums, and dropped it into three separate buffers, panned left, right and center. Each buffer got its own pitch shifter and echo. 

I then ran a loop that did the following:

1. pick one of the buffers at random
2. pick at random how much to shift the pitch from an array of choices (which changed as I ran the program)
3. play the chosen buffer

I overlaid a few copies of this program with different-sized pitch arrays, then laid on some drum machines (one straight one, and two copies of a drum machine driven by a Game of Life algorithm).

All this stuff is coded in ChucK, happy to provide links to the code (I'll put it in my GitHub).

More on this 396th weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Assignment: Make music with by humming a song and then processing the humming — at:

https://disquiet.com/0396/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0396-hum-a-few-bars/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet 1 for Slack inclusion.

disquiet0396 nixon hums

Recorded myself humming onto a tape, recorded that tape into W/ at half speed. I looped it and played it at double speed backwards (so now it's back at the speed i recorded it at but backwards). sent it through Three Sisters two Cold Macs and a DPLPG (had the DJ style mixer patch between a CM and 3S, also had the inverse of the DJ mix going through the other CM's Or/And Circuits so whatever was above survey went to the envelope follower, and below survey went to the audio in on DPLPG. Then the envelope follower controlled slope of the other CM while the corresponding crease out sent CV to the DPLPG and the output of that went to the aux in on the DJ style mixer - "offset". Also had slope out of the 1st CM controlling the second... so the envelope follower of part of the audio was controlling slope and then a signal related to an envelope follower of that signal was controlling the amount of audio being fed back into the original envelope follower... i think). recorded live back to tape, i played with the cold macs and the three sisters frequency and spread.

Backwards Blues Disquiet0396

Hummed a few bars of random melody. I processed the result through several IOS apps, mostly drum machines and granular processors.

Hummin League (disquiet0396)

Recording my humming an original melody/riff/whatnot into old hand me down padlike gizmo. Manipulated and rerecorded in GliderVerb running on said gizmo.  Edited for length & levels with fades in and out, then normalized—all in Audacity running on actual if ageing computer.

So the manipulations were initially done in real time with a portion of that real time rerecording selected to make this. Clarity/statement of original melody not at all a priority nor is this a classicist aiming for a theme and variations approach. The distended bits of the melody were as much a basic source material as the humming itself.  The GVerb delay added some canonical quality to things but was more used with a textural/time & pitch distortion approach in mind. Mostly just the rhythms remain, some sounding like “chicken picking”—thus the more formalistic reason for this being called “Deroost”. Having just moved out of a high view of town also figures into it.

Done for Disquiet Junto 396.

More on this 396th weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Assignment: Make music with by humming a song and then processing the humming — at:

https://disquiet.com/0396/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

2019

Deroost-disquiet0396

I was wracking my head on the drive down to my mum's farm this weekend. I'd made plans to start building a much-talked about aeolian harp on the property using found materials and various bits and pieces I had lying around my home studio. I was (over) thinking aspects of resonance, wire lengths, fundamental tones, harmonics, etc and in between this I was also thinking about this week's challenge.  A couple of days work resulted in the MiddlePhone* (see pic and footnote below) and an outcome for this weeks Junto challenge.

I attached one end of a slinky to the chimney flue on the MiddlePhone, and the other to a tin can. I fixed a contact mic to the interior surface of the chimney flue and pointed a shotgun mic off into the distance. Hitting record, I stretched out the slinky/can and hummed an improvised melody into the can for about a minute.

In the recording you can hear two simultaneous recordings which have been mixed together: the slinky's contact with the flue, and the shotgun mic; which is fixed on my position with the stretched slinky/can. I've mixed the track so that you hear only the shotgun mic recording at first (w/peripheral sounds) and then gradually crossfade into contact mic; the latter revealing the reverberent/harmonic effects of the slinky, as well the articulation of resonances. Which most of the resonances are derived from the flue/slinky combo, I'm fairly certain the network of stretched wires have had some effect too.

The MiddlePhone*

Yesterday afternoon, I deviated dramatically from my original design plan for the aeolian harp; to such an extent that it resembled a completely different instrument - which you can see pictured in the track cover. It comprises of an old tallowwood fencepost jammed between the branch stumps of a Melaleuca tree. The post has thin wires attached to it which are tightened and fixed to the ground, as well as run over an oil drum and also connected to a chimney flue. The wind interplays with it discretely, but is most effective as a ridiculous percussion instrument. However, attaching contact mics to it reveals a variety of resonances and sonic perculiarities. More recordings of the MiddlePhone to feature in the near future!

[disquiet0396] elastic hum

The MiddlePhone is a work-in-progress instrument being constructed at Middle Farm near Yankalilla. 

This recording captures the resonance of the instrument - both at its resting state (i.e. being articulated by a soft breeze) and having its wires plucked.

MiddlePhone test - 4 August 2019

Track notes:

A quick and dirty one this week. I used an iOS 808 emulator, sent it through a stereo amp driving a couple of my corked speakers, using the vibrations to move and rattle objects. I stuck some old guitar strings in the cork of the left speaker to wobble about and strike a tambourine; on the other speaker I layered a tin foil bowl to rattle about. Then I move the objects around and incorporate a bit of tinfoil. I’m quite fond of the outcome; my partner, not so much.

Assignment notes:

Disquiet Junto Project 0397: Numbers Racket
The Assignment: It’s 808 Day. Do it up.

Step 1: It’s 808 Day today, August 8, the start of the latest Junto project. Let’s make it last through Monday.

Step 2: Make music with or about or somehow in the spirit of the Roland TR-808.

[disquiet0397] 808 junklet

For this week's challenge I decided to continue some explorations of the cycle~ object in Max where I've been using it (at very low rates) to control float values which oscillate back and forth; and subsequently transpose this float value to wider ranges to control things like frequency, amplitude and panning.

When thinking about the idea of 'rauschen', a lingering poetic over the past week had been a line from the song 'I Remember Me' by the SilverJews (aka, David Berman):

The tape hiss of the trees

There's always been something so striking and evocative about that line, and for me it does a wonderful thing of bridging the tricky gaps in (the English) language when it comes to accurately describing sounds. Sure, I guess imagining 'tape hiss' is pretty subjective and experiential, but for me it's such a strong (albeit, slightly surreal) poetic expression.

The objective for this week's challenge was for me to evoke the sound of wind through the trees using the hiss of a blank cassette tape. 

I set about building a little Max patch of four noise modules ,with the noise source derived from a hiss of a blank cassette played back on my old Tascam 424 Portastudio. The tape hiss recordings are routed to a bandpass filter, whose frequency range and amplitude are constantly moving. These (along with the panning) are all controlled with cycle~ objects set a different rates. When the four modules play back simultaneously, this creates a pretty dense noise texture which is constantly shifting - evoking the wind shearing through trees at varying intensities and trajectory. 

I've uploaded a breakdown of the Max patch on YouTube if anyone wants to explore the finer details of the process: https://youtu.be/5G59iszqXWw

[disquiet0398] the tape hiss of the trees

Tristan Louth-Robins is a South Australian artist working principally in the medium of sound art and field recording. Ideas of sound and its signification are key elements in Louth-Robins' practice, traversing the space between the visual and aural his work is realised through the mediums of recordings, installation, visual art and performance. He is interested in sound and its associative implications - including its relationship to objects, technology, urban space, memory and the natural world. 


Since 2005, Louth-Robins has presented work in Australia and internationally as a solo artist, whilst also collaborating with artists, writers, researchers, musicians and performers. 

Working across a vast array of activities encompassing composition, sound design, installation art, field recording and workshops, his work has been featured in events such as the Adelaide Festival of Arts (2006), The National Regional Arts Festival (2012), Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival (2013), Fairfax Festival (2013) and Adelaide Fringe Festival (2014); and selected works exhibited at galleries including The Australian Experimental Art Foundation (2009), SASA Gallery (2012, 2015), Light Square Gallery (2012) and FELT Space (2015). His audio works have been broadcast on radio including Radio National, Classic FM, The BBC (UK), Acoustic Frontiers (USA) and RBB (Germany).